And Again
by lyner
Summary: Ororo has to walk a path that she never wanted to walk again, then finds the woman she is. first xmen fanfic ever! :D
1. Default Chapter

uAnd again./u  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own the x men, and don't intend to get any profit from this.  
  
First x men fanfic ever! :)  
  
Ding.  
  
Ding.  
  
Ding.  
  
WREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.  
  
Scott mumbled some profanity face down into his pillow, and flicked the alarm clock off its stand. Peculiarly, the thoughts in his head were Hahaha! Die!  
  
Coincidentally, the same thoughts of the big pink robot standing outside his window. Scott eyed the mechanical smile slowly move downwards below the line of view of the window, to be replaced by all-too-lifeless red eyes. Scott quickly turned his head and released his laser eye beams, sending the sentinel keeling backward and into their driveway. He quickly jumped out of bed and triggered the siren.  
  
Soon enough the sky was littered with big pink robots and teeny X-men, and a vicious fight ensued.  
  
For Storm, or otherwise Ororo to most that weren't big and pink, this was the least fun thing to be doing on a Saturday morning, contrary to what the mundane action-yearning public would believe. Would they ever be left in peace? She thought to herself, and had Obviously not, yelled back to her by the stark inevitability of reality that was the everyday of an X-man's life.  
  
There were at least twenty sentinels attacking them, and yet another needless to be answered question because there was no valid explanation, was Whatever for. If only people would for once give up and realise that the world could gain a lot of sleep if it were not for the pointless musings of die-hard anti-mutant extremists. But this is a world where people fly and turn invisible, and this is the world were Unexplained is better left Unbothered.  
  
For simply existing, this seemed so unfair. But what was she to do about it? Simply make it a little more fair by ridding them of a few more ugly pink things. Her eyes misted over as she rummaged through her list of powers to release a hurricane that would hopefully blow these annoyances off course or batter them with lightning to a system failure, and hopefully they'd drop like big pink flies.  
  
She found herself dodging many shots, having to fight on various fronts at once. These sentinels were being irritating, and weren't responding quickly enough to her lightning bolts. So they had been upgraded, yet again, but the X-men were prepared to deal with anything. Or at least it was more comforting and better for the ego to assume so.  
  
Suddenly out of the corner of her eye, she saw a sentinel with a strange device hooked up to one of its arms. She fixed her attention on the gun for a while, abstractedly sending lighting bolts to extinguish whatever sentinels came from behind. Having absolute control over the winds helped, when you didn't have eyes at the back of your head. She stared at it, sure but yet not sure that it was familiar to her. She thought knew she had seen it somewhere before, a long time ago. But.  
  
That didn't matter. It was aimed towards Jean, who was too preoccupied trying to telekinetically rattle the insides of a sentinel to its death, not aware of the red pointer of the gun that was dancing around the small of her back. A sweet, unassuming dance, beautiful if it were not the harbinger of death. Ororo tried yelling, but dam her stupid hurricane that made too much noise. She tried to send a wind to push Jean away from the little red light, but Jean had anchored herself too firmly against the hurricane winds and Ororo began to panic. She fled the responsibilities of her own sentinels that were on her back, and flew towards Jean, regardless of whatever threats she herself might be facing, caring more for the life of her own friend. Unfortunately.  
  
She darted in the way of the gun and Jean, so that the light now landed on her own breast. No. Not good. But there was no way to turn this situation around any more. At that moment, Jean, having finished extinguishing her prey, turned around as she felt Ororo's hair billowing against her own back. It was then that she saw the gun pointed straight at them. Ororo had raised her hands in an effort to blast the gun to bits. She hadn't thought of firing at it from a distance at first, her first thought was only for Jean. Unfortunately.  
  
At the same moment, the red light that sat happily in her bosom went away and was replaced by a beam of energy straight into her breast.  
  
Now she knew why it was so familiar. She had felt this way before, and the pain that seared through her served as an all-too-vivid reminder. Maybe if she had recognized that condemnable weapon earlier, she wouldn't have done this. But she couldn't let Jean endure this. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth but no sound was heard as her throat closed against her vocal cords. The veins on her neck became starkly apparent as she strained to yell out the pain that coursed in her, through and through. Tears that burnt seeped out from the corners of her eyes and rolled down her burning face, each reflecting the lightning around her as it slid gently down her cheeks. All too innocently.  
  
The winds turned against her, and her arms flew open, stretched out from her body. She felt the lightning that she held so dear in her hands being pulled through her fingertips, and try as she might to close her hands and keep them to herself once more, she could not help as they impatiently streaked out of her, as if they never belonged there. They felt like thistles, the thorns of which dragged a part of her out with it, stinging her as they flew from her body. She felt the wind being pulled out of her breath, leaving her gaping for air, and her stomach pressed inward, revealing her bony ribs that were arched backward with her back.  
  
Jean tried to touch her, to reach out to her, but she couldn't, she tried but was blown away. She could only watch as streaks of the most beautiful blue-white spiralled up towards the heavens and tore away from Ororo, screaming cries of freedom as they shot soundlessly into the darkness of the early morning sky.  
  
The sentinels did begin dropping like flies, being huge conductors that hadn't the humility to see how much power this woman had contained.  
  
And only a woman, as she stepped off her pedestal and fell daintily from her heaven-bound abode.  
  
I don't usually write such drama-y things so I hope I did an ok job on this. :) 


	2. stuck

Hey tanks Summers2004 for reviewing :)  
  
Ororo opened her eyes in her old attic loft at Xavier's. It had been a while since she'd been here, having only taken leave from her X-treme team when Jean hollered for her assist with new condemnable sentinels.  
  
No wind. Everyday she would wake up, and find she couldn't revive part of her subconscious from its dream as it rode along with the winds, because that was where part of her always was. A part of her, lightly tethered to herself, that remained content pacing on the fluffy brims of clouds, springing back and forth, sticking her tongue out in the way of the rain. Like a balloon, refusing to come down wherever she herself went. Always tied to the skies.  
  
But this morning the line was slack. The line lay on her bed sheet, trailed off on to the thatched floor, and end off in a bedraggled image of herself that had been deflated and dragged from the sky. A burden that she would now have to haul, instead of having it lead her as she bounded along on the earth, chasing it like a kite. There, on the floor next to her, like a dead bird.  
  
She closed her eyes. She refused to open them, even, or maybe especially, when she heard Jean come in, rustle back and forth for a bit, and then finally decide to sit down instead of head back out.  
  
"Ororo." she began, but Ororo turned her head towards her, opened her eyes and simply looked at her with her eyes half closed in a somnambulistic stare.  
  
"I'm so sorry. Thank you. I'm very sorry." Jean couldn't decide which was better to be, apologetic that she cost her friend her life, as so it was, or thankful that Fate had cheated Ororo instead of herself.  
  
Ororo continued to nonchalantly stare, her left arm limply hanging of the bed and her right holding up the sheets to her bare chest.  
  
Jean looked outside the door, doubled back, then went away.  
  
There was nothing left. Not even a hint of nothing, just nothing. She lifted up the hand that held the covers, stretching it out away from her, trying to see if maybe a wind would start to swirl around it, willing it sweetly, then threateningly, even egging it on and taunting it by pursing her lips and blowing at it, but absence; without anything; is the definition of nothing.  
  
She refused to come down from her attic, refused to leave the door unlocked anymore and refused to move from where she lay on her bed. Ha, how audacious and ludicrous of her to think that starving herself would lure a stray cloud back. She wasn't even thinking about anything, not cursing Forge, cursing Jean, cursing Xavier, cursing sentinels, just wondering Where did all the wind go?  
  
Where is all the light? Where is all the rain? Where are all the clouds? Where are all the rainbows?  
  
No more rainbows, rainbow lady.  
  
The pot of gold is an empty pot, you used up all the gold. There isn't any more.  
  
Just one?  
  
Just an empty pot.  
  
No rainbow?  
  
With it goes the rainbow. No more rainbows, rainbow lady.  
  
Ororo stood up on her bed, and walked to the centre of the room, and stepped into the small square of light that shone onto her floor from the skylight above. She dragged her covers behind her, leading it along with her left index finger, and stark naked stood alone in the small square which was all that the sunlight had to give her. Just a small and lonely square, unassuming on the darkened floor.  
  
Okay then.  
  
She sat down in the square, letting go of the sheet that clung on to her finger, and reaching upward towards her sky light. She looked up, eyes small and glinting against the sun, and stretched her arm further so the light glanced off her ribs, reaching, waving her fingers about to try and touch something.  
  
A helpless naked woman, reaching out into the sky, for  
  
Nothing. 


	3. fallacy of forever

Hi! Thank you very much to Mike N, Darlin and summers2004 for reviewing :)   
  
  
3rd.   
  
  
There were legs dangling from the skylight, slender legs, the right of which curled around the other, both handing lifelessly from somewhere unseen.   
  
Sage stood at the door, not wanting to intrude yet seeing the necessity anyhow. She saw a small step ladder in the middle of the room. Ha, she gave a short breath with the hint of a smile, a flying lady with a step ladder.   
  
Ororo lay on her roof, her right arm covering her chest and her hair as her blanket, gently sending wisps to curve around her in the sporadic breeze. She moved the fingers of her left hand slowly up and down her bare stomach, thinking about nothing in particular yet being flooded by goodness knows what. She hadn't moved for quite a while, not since yesterday afternoon. Who needs to move? It's a useless ability. Who needs to fly? It's equally pointless.   
  
Ha. This was almost hilarious. To think having gone through this before would have already gotten her her entitlement to tranquillity by now. But by 'tranquil', one usually thinks of walking on clouds, but clouds don't come down near enough for you to just get on them and hitch a ride, you're supposed to go up to them. Can't without wings. Can't without wanting to.   
  
She heard someone coming. Did she care? No.   
"Hi."  
  
Sage is pretty. She let her hair down, finally, and it was carelessly slung over her shoulder. Ororo had pulled her legs up out of the sky light, and now hung her head through it, looking down at Sage who was looking up at her.   
  
She breathed deeply, hoping Sage would catch that was a hello, now if you please, go away.   
  
"Miss you. Neal's missing you, but they're on a mission. Said to say hello."   
  
Neal. Fine, of all the people in the world she could leave standing at her door, and shoving to get in, maybe Neal she could allow. She loved Neal, she really did. Or at least she thought she did. It was so hard to tell when you've been sitting naked on the roof for a day. She still remembered though, Neal kissing her that morning, pushing her hair behind her ear, and saying Love you as he moved in to her lips. She smiled, and left, and got shot down by a big pink robot.   
  
"So, how have you been? Jean's worried about you and hating herself, saw her very morose at the patio."   
  
Ororo continued to look down blinking and blinking at Sage, her eyes half-closed.   
  
"Come on Storm, come down."   
  
Sage walked over to her bed, reached for her blanket and held it up to her. Soon she carefully stepped down on to the step ladder, and held her white covers around her with her hand at her chest. It's train patiently and elegantly waited over the side of the sky light.   
  
"Storm, come on, cheer up!"   
  
Sage was looking at Ororo, dejected, rejected and kicked off her throne.   
  
"Stop calling me that."   
  
"Storm…"   
  
"I said don't call me that!" She flung her hair around, looking from the corners of her eyes at Sage, glaring at her over her shoulder.   
  
"Ororo. You have to stop this. Cheer up!"   
  
"How can I, Tessa? How am I supposed to do that!" Sage could tell her voice was cracking.   
  
"Or-"   
  
"How many times have you died, Sage. How many times have you found that there's nothing, really, in dreams? That there's nothing in everything. How can I 'cheer up', do you even know what it's like? To lose a part of yourself? To lose what defines you, to lose what you are? What are we fighting for. What?? Tell me Sage!"   
  
There were tears. The unfamiliar touch of tears flowing down her cheek, and the unfamiliar sight. Did she care? Not at all.   
  
"Is it so much that it is worth our lives? Is it so much for me to live everyday with the bane of a curse and a world to myself and guilt, and shame, and incompetence, and hurt? A world to myself that nobody knows, a world that I can't tell you, living in a stupid mist that blinds everyone so they give you no comfort, no shelter, from the curse you drag around? Are you alone, Sage?   
  
And I should be happy. Shouldn't I. That finally, I can tell you, I can cry, I can hurt, I can be angry, I can hate.   
  
But I'm not. And things don't work that way."   
  
Sage began to say something, but was cut short by Ororo as she turned full body to face her, screaming hoarsely into her face, Heck care the tears. Sage had never seen Ororo this way, not very sure she wanted to either. We're all human, it seems.   
  
"--They don't!!"   
  
"Please Ororo, your powers aren't a curse.. they're a gift, your gifts."   
  
"Funny, that you should bring that up, Sage," Ororo spat the words like profanity, sarcasm ringing through her anger, resounding through the stifled tenderness of the room. She raised and eyebrow and cocked her head. "Remind me. Why in the world was I shouting."   
  
"I'm sorry I.. I didn't mean it like that."   
  
"Nothing is a gift, sage Nothing. Nothing is a gift because Nothing is forever. Everything is 'great' until you don't have it anymore. Then you find that it really was a curse after all, because it stopped. Because it became Nothing. And there's this Nothingness inside you that makes you finally realize that Nothing can be great because Everything goes away.   
  
There is Nothing that you can keep, Nothing that you will have to yourself always, and in the end, nothing is ever more than a dream.   
  
Dreams are intangible, Sage. Dreams are things you cannot touch. And that's how they're meant to be, Sage. Dreams can only be Dreams if we never touch them. If we never have them. Then they are still Dreams, still hopes, still Dreams that are worth living for. And as much as you want to keep them forever, Dreams shatter, and elude you. A dream isn't hope unless you can't feel it.   
  
And when you think you've found a way to keep it, it falls from the sky.   
  
But you'll never know.   
  
  
  
Unless you've flown."   
  
  
  
Sage turned to leave.   
  
  
Suddenly, modified red-lensed shades on Ororo's side table decided to get off their inorganic bum and start yelling.   
  
  



	4. nothing you can't find

Thanks to summers2004 and Darlin for reviewing! (fine. thank you Debs. xp)  
  
  
4th   
  
_Hello? Is this thing working? Sage, Storm, come in! Hello?? Bishop will you shut up I'm trying to make this work! Why the hell doesn't this have a reset button? Stor- \/\/\/\/\/\ -age-/\/\/\  
  
Wrrrrrrrr _-klik-  
  
  
  
Ororo violently kicked the step ladder away, and turned away from the window where she had seen Sage riding off on her bike, and began to cry more tears into her hands. Why was she so useless? The anger coursing through her words had now risen to form a lump at the back of her throat, risen to ask Why her, and risen to condemn and find away to let her slip into nothing again.  
  
"Hello Storm."  
  
She recognized that voice. He stood on her balcony, dark trench coat swaying like his hair in the wind. The morning light held half of his face in darkness, but still she knew who he was. He began to slowly trudge to where she stood in the middle of the room, eyes boring into her and trying to utter words of passion. The wrong kind of passion, as he reached his right arm across himself to his holt on the left side of his belt, letting his sword sound menacingly as he slid it against his belt buckle, making the point that he would not sheath it very clear. The wrong kind of passion.  
  
Vargas.  
  
Someone hadn't done a good job killing him, or someone hadn't even tried. But that someone was to die as well. Her as well. But she couldn't care, for maybe this was the release from the inadequacy, the hate, the desire, the incompletion, the yearning and the emptiness, and what else it was that she could not care to feel. She let him come.  
  
"I hear it wasn't you I killed."  
  
She let him swing his sword and let its tip cut into her arm. She let the blood gently trickle as she stood, looking down and clutching her covers to her chest.  
  
He came up to her and reached for her throat, ramming her against the wall behind her and pinning her with his grip. She let him, still holding onto her covers as if that were all she cared about anymore. A blanket that would cover her, shield her, and keep her away from all she didn't bother about. One that would cover her when she cried so that no one would see her tears and pity her now, and be the emptiness she could scream into. The purity of whiteness that would cover her and allay her impurity, the person she couldn't be, every fault that was too late to change. A woman in a white blanket, nothing more to do with expectations, others' or her own, the person she was, the person she failed to be, no more with the shelter of ashen oblivion.  
  
Vargas leant forward onto her, pressing even more against her neck. It was hard to breathe and it hurt, but not enough. Come on, hurt me some more. She didn't even know what she wanted to want anymore. It was all only emptiness. Nothing to feel, nothing she could do.  
  
"Fight me Storm!"  
  
But she only continued to look lifelessly into his eyes, indifferently countering his fervent rage. He brought his sword to level with her face, until its edge began to draw blood from her cheek. He came close to her, until they were almost lip to lip.  
  
"Fight me." He said, breathing on to her face. "Blow me away." But all she could do was exhale onto his face.  
  
He lifted her up and flung across the room, sending her flying through the air for half the journey and skidding across the floor for the rest until she slammed into the opposite wall. But all the while, Ororo didn't lift a finger to keep him away. She let him come, rhythmically, peacefully. Why fight him? He seemed to be having enough fun on his own.  
  
He walked up to her again and placed the tip of his sword on the bare area of her chest, letting it's cool tip slide lazily back and forth, then he stopped, and bent down to stare at her.  
  
She waited, not eagerly, not apprehensively, just waited.  
  
Then she smiled at him, turning it into a taunting smirk.  
  
"I have no lightning anymore," practically gleefully said.  
  
He eyed her, then grabbed the sheets she held on to and flung her to the corner of the room.  
  
"Then you are not worthy," he said, as he swung around, sheathed his sword and jumped from the balcony.  
  
  
Unworthy.  
  
  
----  
  
  
That's not good, Sage thought, having heard Neal's message. Running back to the mansion. She couldn't go to their aid alone, what use was a super mind against a big shiny gun. It was then that she saw Vargas in Storm's room, through the window, and quickly ran up to her room.   
  
She saw Ororo sitting on her bed, unscathed save a cut on her right cheek and arm. She did a quick analysis, and found her otherwise fine. Mentally fine? No.  
  
"What happened?"  
  
"Vargas" she said, looking at the floor, unemotional.  
  
"Ororo… Neal just messaged in that he was in trouble, but the message got cut short. They need our help."  
  
"Well then go help them! What do you expect me to do!!?" she yelled, still staring at the floor.  
  
Jean came running from behind her, flustered and worried when she saw Sage bolting up the stairs to Ororo's room.  
  
"Ororo please! You have to snap out of this. I hate seeing you like this! And we need your help, Sage and I can't just go and help them alone, because I don't think Vargas came only for you…"  
  
"Well what do you want me to do Jean??" she yelled, still staring at the floor.  
  
A silence started dancing in the middle of the three of them, along to a strange primordial rhythm of emptiness.  
  
Then Sage bit her lip and looked at the both of them for a while. Was this her decision to make? Well she made it anyhow.  
  
"Storm --" Ororo glared at her. "I… I can do for you what I did for Davis. But things are very much complicated with the effects of the neutralizer -- that's why I didn't bring it up before. All I can give you are extremely biased statistics, and the fact that there's also always Chance… Chance for failure."  
  
Jean looked hopeful, thinking that finally this weight of guilt might be lifted off her own shoulders. How selfish to think that way, she thought, and now concerned herself with what Sage had meant with 'biased statistics'  
  
Ororo didn't know what to think. It's peculiar how you can want something so much yet when you finally get it you deliberate. But did she actually want it back? Did she want to be alone again? To have to never cry again? Yet she wouldn't just let Neal die. Also she couldn't care about whatever it was that happened to her now, it was all just part of some long unending dream she couldn't find the strength to wake up from, all some walk through a fantastical unreality. She might as well play along.  
  
"Go ahead and kill me," she said as she walked over to her bed and lay down.  
  
Sage looked clearly surprised.  
  
"Ororo are you sure you want to do this? I mean there could be a whole lot of complications to your powers after that, and you might not even --"  
  
"Do I look like I care?" she said snidely, not caring much about anyone anymore.  
  
Sage looked to Jean, then shrugged, and* put her hands on Ororo's temples.  
  
"Hold still." And Ororo slipped into unconsciousness after a surge of a very unfamiliar tingle, at least it felt sort of like a tingle, but it was a tingle equipped with horns and all, that came scraping it's back hoof against the sand and charging at her with it's truckload of bulk, and didn't carry out its impact very gracefully.  
  
----  
  
  
Ororo tried to open her eyes. Well that was when she thought they were closed, but she couldn't be very sure now whether they were closed or not. Were they supposed to be? Who knows?  
  
Whether her eyes were closed or not, she saw millions and millions of blue-white lights streaking back and forth. All over they ran across a white background, chasing each other, and being chased. Straight ahead was a tall column of the same blue-white lights, starkly standing out against the lateral running streaks behind it. Its blue-white lights were travelling faster than any others around it. Of these lights some were even faster, racing around the column incessantly and sending off gentle sparks in the wake of their launch. She had never seen anything so… beautiful before. All around her she only saw blue-white and streaks of it dancing back and forth across her vision, whether or not vision is supposed to mean what you see with your eyes open. She slowly sat up and reached her hand towards the column in front of her, and tried to come closer to touch it, willing herself to grab it. Suddenly the blue lights slowed down, and as she began to close her hand to try and hold it from a distance, they slowed to a halt and remained now as tiny glowing stars, linking together to make a constellation of the most breathtaking pulchritude.  
  
Wow.  
  
Then she saw the lights fall on each other and become a messy heap, as if they had to keep running to stay alive. Suddenly she began hearing voices, soft at first like sweet whispers, mumbling in the background like tender cacophony. They began to get louder and louder, but she was entranced, her mind was elsewhere so she did not hear the voices.  
  
"ORORO!"  
  
Suddenly the blue-white plane disappeared and she snapped back to proper reality, of the darkness that was what the view behind closed eyelids was supposed to be like. She opened her eyes wide, only to find Jean screaming at her, and Sage slumped over the edge of her bed. Her right arm was stretched out towards Sage, the fingers of her right hand curled together. Quickly she pulled her hand back, and Sage's eyes shot open. She lay on the foot of her bed, staring wide eyed at the ceiling, gasping for breath.  
  
At this point Jean turned to look at Ororo, frowning though, looking completely confused and worried. Ororo lifted her right hand to look at it, turning it this way and that in an even greater amount of shock.  
  
"Wow," she said, and as she did the breath she exhaled became tiny crystals of ice and dropped onto her lap.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
*I never actually read the one where Sage was jumpstarting Davis but I'll just assume it went like this.


	5. hiding in the mist, i've found you

Thanks Viral for reviewing! :) it's not my first fan fic.. my first x men one though, but I'm still fairly fresh in the fan fic world :)  
Man I hated that last chapter.. but okay this one I am a little more proud of.. :)  


  
5th  


  
Things were slightly different.  
  
Alright maybe not slightly, very. She liked this different, only that there was still something in her that didn't all appreciate it, and was beginning to feel afraid just a bit. She had the weather now, and it subserviently wafted in between the fingers of her hands. It was much the same, yet so much more. Sage had said she hadn't done anything to hike up her powers, just that her awareness of it was now much clearer, a statement which proved itself when Ororo called for a breeze and a hurricane came storming its way in through her window.  
  
Things felt so unfamiliar, and she felt so unsure of herself. When she looked at her hand she didn't know what to do with it, and she felt helpless while infallible at the same time, like a giant too afraid to move in case it fell over, like an artist holding a brush not sure whether to take the first stroke, not sure if that stroke would fly or falter, not sure whether she would soar or stumble.  
  
She felt afraid of herself now, guilty even, as Jean tried to keep a safe distance from her, trying not to show it but further away all the same. Was she now something better or something worse? Was she now something she more wanted or something she more dreaded? Was she now something she would accept or something that she would hate herself for everyday? Was this now a start or something she would want to end? Was this what she truly needed or wanted or is what you feel you least want really the only thing you actually need? Was she actually missing the emptiness? Missing the lifelessness? Missing having nothing? Weren't people strange? But she isn't people, for people don't fly and people die once. She had died too many times, so maybe she had wished for the last time to stay that way.  
  
Why so fickle? Why couldn't she be happy that she could fly again? Happy that she could now fly even higher? Why lady with the wind, why do you fear after all.  
  
It's a fear of having something that maybe isn't mine.  
  
When you've lost something, you lose it after all, no matter whether it comes back to you or not. When you've lost something, and you get it back, you hold it tenderly because you don't want to have it break again, and you don't want to have it dissolve in front of you again like it did before. In fact you want it less because you're reminded of how once before you couldn't keep it, but for her now twice before, and it keeps reminding you that third times are likely, even though something else tries to tell you Third time's a charm, you don't believe it, and you don't want to lose this again.  
  
Yet at the same time she felt complete, like a part of her had been awakened, along with many other parts she never knew she had before. Fickle, picky and indecisive, is that all we will ever be? Who can say they were ever truly happy. Why such a pointless dispute? For now she could feel the wind through her hair again, not only as it wove its way but she could hear its laughter as well. She could hear it's softly spoken whispers as it clambered its way along, she could hear its song before it even came close enough to touch her. She could feel again the tender tingle of the storm on the edges of her fingertips, feel once more that she had everything that she needed to have, and that she was everything that she needed to be. Her muse had found its way back to its cavern in her soul, and sat unassumingly as it inspired her to fly.  
  
But what of the person she couldn't be anymore? What about the things she had to stop saying, and the anger she had to keep to herself? What of the façade she would have to begin to painfully rebuild again around herself? Sadly, slowly, brick by aching brick. Condemned again to be shut off into herself, viewed as the dispassionate indifferent woman, treated like a goddess because goddesses are infallible and goddesses have no feelings, austere and unimpressionable on their own. Fated to stand aside and smile while inside you try to yell but can't because you're muffled by the wind, muffled by the rain that would not have you speak. The people around you cannot hear your cries for compassion because there are none, because you can't afford any, because you're too poor and deprived of the privilege to express yourself and say something, at least something. Alone again, with people only able to guess at what you feel, and no one ever guessing quite close enough to comfort you where you need comforting, to touch you were you need touching, to hold you were you need holding. Always a wrong answer, and you can't even tell them they're wrong, can't tell them what's the right answer because you yourself, you're not sure what's the right answer at all, because you've never felt it, because your questions have never been answered. They've only been buried, they've only festered, they've only spawned the spurning of your sequestered rage. It's left you devoid of feelings you don't remember, and it's stripped you of love because it's stripped you of hate. She's forgotten how to feel.  
  
She floated up through her skylight, and lingered above the rooftop for a while before ascending to feel the gentle wet kiss of the clouds against her cheek. She stretched out her arms so that the wind would flow around it, so that the wind would find her, say hello, and accept her once again.  
  
She called for a gentle drizzle, and let it trickle down her face, sting her open eyes, and flow into her mouth and quench her wordless yearnings of what mostly wasn't even thirst. She let it flow into her clothes, wrap around her every crevice, and lodge itself beneath her eyelids and between her toes. She smelt its strange ethereal scenting and let it fill her mind with its wistful messages of blossoming fields, unbroken forests, brooks in woods that remained untouched. She let it sing into her ears the placid monotonous chatter of mundane and simple lyrics of the earth. She let her view of the world be shielded by an emotionless cascade of lightly falling drops of water, coming in the way of the sky around her and making amateur, fairy-like static, static which is nothing but an endless deceiving reprimanding of how there is really nothing to care about, it may seem like there's still something for you to see or touch but really, everything's been taken away. There's nothing left anymore, only the gently falling rain, nothing that she need care about.   
  
And there was the answer that she never found, there was the treasure she had been looking for, that she never found because it wasn't where she was looking, because it was already there unperturbed and fulfilling what it needed to do. She needed no counseling, no shoulder, no embrace to answer to her cravings and her anger, her desire and her frustration. Because the rain, her rain, could wash it all away. Her tender wind could blow it all away, and her warm and radiant sunshine could kiss her where she hurt. The heavy clouds would yell her anger in their thunder, the winds would hiss her pain in their seething through the trees. The rain would cry the tears she never cried, and the sun would scorch the hate she never spurned.  
  
She had never cried out with never having a need to, and she never need again because the wind, the rain, the lightning, the sun, the thunder would do her bidding and her comforting, and be her shelter as she sheltered all the world.  



	6. coming to save you

Hi! I've just been reading a lot of hyper drama fan fiction so now I'm all filled with dramatic stuff and sorry if my writing's suddenly changed... thanks Darlin and storms-rose for the review! Look another chapter… if you were thinking it wasn't doing a very good job of going anywhere well haha I'm sorry… I've finally got on with the story :)

6th

Jean looked towards Ororo. She felt something different about her. A good different. 

Jean reached out a hand towards the wall next to her, gently running her fingers over the moss laden bricks that lined the corridor leading to Rogue's villa from the wine cellars. She absent-mindedly traced the windings of the vines that like subterfuge pathways, etched themselves into the wall. Ororo and Sage walked along side her, all as dispassionate as the other. 

Ororo was back to having simple, normal lightning, which she was quite relived about because she did not want to have to accidentally kill somebody. It was interesting for a while to have such heightened powers though, she had to admit. A pervading sense of peace had waded its way into her mind and set up camp, and though she worried about her team-mates, there was something yellow and sunny bounding around at the back of her mind. 

Sage looked through her red shades, and everything turned red. A big red map hung in front of her head, showing where they had to go. She held her glasses with one hand, gently fingering its side as she thought about how tedious and lame this all got eventually. We get captured, we save the day! We get killed, we save the world! But Monotony and Mundane still bring their share of pain. 

The three of them walked down the lonely corridor, rustling the sporadic leaves that scattered the floor. Neal, Heather, Davis and Bishop were in danger, from a far too highly formidable threat that came striding into their lives with sword and all in the form of Vargas. It was a painful walk down a musty corridor to be taking on a day such as this, with the memory of Psylocke still hanging stubbornly to their minds, and with foreshadowing instinct ringing clearly through their thoughts. The pain still stayed unrelentingly, reminding them that life isn't easier if you have superpowers or a gun. If you have a gun, its bullets have to get shot. Too young to die, but a bit too weathered to care. 

They slowly turned a corner at the end of the corridor, and several turns and climbs later came to the back entrance to the hall of the house. This probably was a trap, but who cares, if traps are meant to elude you and have you walk into them then you might as well follow suit. At least it would mean that maybe Vargas hadn't killed their team mates yet. 

Ororo blew down the door with her winds, to make a suitably significant entrance. That was the X men's way anyhow. 

What they saw behind the door seemed all too placid, with Vargas sitting alone atop the fireplace in the hall and Neal, Bishop, Davis and Heather slumped over some distance away on the parquet, sort of peacefully, as if Vargas was watching them sleep. Jean quickly directed her gaze to the fallen four, and ensured they were still alive. He hadn't killed them, so all the better for them, but maybe just proved it was a trap and proved it wasn't all the better for them after all, because Vargas had only not killed them because he hadn't wanted to. 

When Vargas saw the door fly pass his panorama of view, his eyes perked and he jumped off the fireplace, grabbing his sword that had been impatiently edging its way closer to him, pining in its bloodlust. 

"Well hello," Vargas said, coming towards them, upright and regal, dignified, seeming as if he was trying to taunt them with the sight of himself. He knew the only word going through their heads now was a hissing malicious _Psylocke_! That refused to be subdued after all this while. He practically felt their hate emanating from their gaze, and it invigorated him, like the flame to the flammable that he harboured, spark to his fire, harbinger of his wrath. 

"Ah! Storm. My debt is not yet due to you. Rogue isn't here; I was hoping to make her come. I was looking forward to that. She owes me a battle. I do not like being left out on the lam," he said, eyeing them curiously. He wondered if they'd prove game as worthy. Only to his delight; the purpose of bloodthirsty men, only to his satisfaction and deeming; the futility of villains. 

"We're fighting in her stead." 

"Then die in her stead." 

Thais and Thaiis, his companion twins, came to either side of him and they stared down their respective opponents, and wryly smiled. 

Ororo, on the right, found the gleaming evil in Thais eyes staring back at her. Yet another day, yet another trial. Will she pass this one?

He came running toward her, and as she tried to reach out her hand to direct lightning at him, he leaped over her and kicked her in the small of her back. She fell forward and was annoyed that she had had underestimated him. Standing up and whipping around, now suitably aggressed and involved in battle, she quickly bent down and swiped his feet off the ground. Unfortunately he gracefully flipped himself and righted, smiling at her with still that evil glint in his eye. But while he was turning to face her, Dark Clouds rolled by and Dark Clouds rolled off, while lightning screamed from her fingertips toward his chest, faster than any normal person would have been able to avoid it, but was he normal? No. He had caught with the corner of his eye her hands gesturing towards him, and he now pulled his sword from its scabbard behind him and used it to shield his chest. The lightning drew itself to the sword, and he remained completely unfazed, holding the sword up high, as if triumphantly announcing the means to her death, laughing sadistically.

_ Rubber gloves! They insulated against the lightning!_ thought Ororo. This was going to be some tough day. And so early in the morning too, she hated to miss sunrise. Quickly she lashed out her left arm at him, sending a wind that had him careening over to the other side of the room, where his back slammed against the wall and he slid down, breathing heavily and looking down. She walked over toward him, and as she did his eyes raised up again to meet hers, yelling at her with them, If you think that was it you've got a lot more coming. He gathered himself up to full height and picked up his sword.

Ororo was slightly at a loss as to what to do. This man was infallible! She had just slammed him into a concrete wall at about 250km/h and there he was, standing up and continuing his game of who would blink first.

Jean herself was not all that well off. She found herself facing Vargas, who seemed to have upped his level of manic aggression, maybe after losing that fight with Rogue, full of vindictive vengefulness. He came swinging his sword around, haphazardly plunging it into the ground from which a part of her had barely left. She tried to telekinetically hold him off but he was that strong indeed, her forceful shoves with her mind becoming mere nudges at the ankle of a giant, that only served to further anger him. She was already not at the peak of her strength, having only recently got rid of Cassandra, and she had been greatly weakened by that traumatic experience. The revelation about Scott and Emma's affair was also eating at the back of her mind, forcing her to lose concentration. But she doubted that even at the peak of her strength her efforts would have at all mattered. She tried to mentally reach out into his mind, but his psi-shields were incredible for a non-mutant. She guessed this was why he had a reputation in the mutant assassination business. No wonder even Psylocke had been crushed and crumbled to fond ashes in his hands.

Suddenly when she began to think about Psylocke, her mind became distracted, and the last miss that had barely escaped her now redeemed itself and struck into her shoulder. It pinned her to the ground, and her eyes shot up towards the sweating, smiling Vargas who jeered back with his own gaze and walked off, and she screamed in pain. 

Hearing Jean's scream, Ororo frantically swivelled around to see Jean with Vargas' sword sticking out of her shoulder like a flag of conquer, but she cursed herself at the back of her mind as she did for she knew for sure that Thais' breath would soon fall on her neck. And so it did, as Thais lunged for her and pulled her to him, locking her hands and tightly embracing her, with his strong grip around her chest. There was no way she was going to defeat him by brutal physical means alone, she had to call on her powers to save her. Tough luck with his sword, but she tried to call lightning down on him again. But all he did was stick his sword up in the air, drawing any stray bolt to it and harmlessly letting the lightning swivel uselessly around his blade. He bent forward and laughed a sickly inhuman laugh into her ear. Then he brought the sword down and held its point at Ororo's side, and she quickly withdrew her lightning, to save the supercharged sword from electrocuting her. He dug the point in a little at her side, and her eyes misted over as she winced from the pain. At this moment Ororo was faced towards her fallen comrades, and she saw Neal on the floor, heavily breathing and helpless. Vargas happily stood in the middle of the room, observing the carnage wrought by himself. No. She wouldn't let Neal die.

As Thais pulled away the sword to make its final plunge into her, she took a sharp breath and garnered up all her strength, and hitching her left foot onto Thais' knee, kicked her lower body upward so that she flipped over Thais as his handhold on her lost itself. His sword plunged into nothing, and he lost his balance as Ororo escaped from his grip. Keeping her mind about herself, she hastily kicked the sword out of Thais' hand, sending it flying off to settle in the middle of the room. Now that he had nothing to avert her assault, she called down lightning again, and this time it dutifully struck Thais and his body arched with the flow of charge, and then collapsed lifelessly onto the floor as his eyes rolled up into his head.

In the middle of the room, Vargas saw a sword sliding across the floor, only to stop at his feet. He picked it up, inspected it, then turned his smile towards Ororo, meeting her gaze, as he menacingly rotated its hilt in his hand and walked towards Neal who lay panting on the floor, looking up at his oncoming helplessly.

"No," Ororo whispered through her own unsteady breathing, still bent over to her side and holding her hand there to stop the blood. Her eyes widened, gazing at the tip of the sword as it lumbered ever closer to Neal. It was as if Vargas had been patiently waiting at the middle of the room for her own actions to bring him the sword that would kill her love, and spite her with the irony. It was working.


	7. don't touch 1

PG I suppose, for semi violence, I don't really know how to rate these things.  
  
Thanks Viral n Summers2004 n Debs n Loanshark for your reviews! Debs n Loany,… please… I mean it!  
  
Summers2004: hehe no I don't think so… I just think Logan's too short for Ro's own good ;) I'm more of a Remy/Ro shipper.. or well. Neal/Ro shipper. Hope I haven't chased you away… :)

disclaimer: x men ain't mine. and also every word in this is purposed for the way you read it.  
  
  
7th  
  
  
  
Ororo turned to look at her team mates. Sage was still fighting Thaiis, jumping about from mantelpiece to chair, trying to avoid the wayward fists of the other. It appeared it was just her and Sage now, and Sage wouldn't be able to help her.  
  
Vargas had come to where Neal helplessly looked upwards at the sword's tip coming to rest on the bridge of his nose, swivelling on its balance so a drop of blood fell down his left cheek. He tried to bring his hands under him to lift himself up and get away from the sword which threatened to bore its way into his head, but he couldn't find the strength to even waggle the end of his finger.  
  
It had all been so sudden, when they had come to the aid of Bishop, Davis and his sister who had borrowed the place for the weekend, then found themselves all too quickly defeated and left to curse their ineptness as they lay sprawled on the floor, staring up at the ceiling.  
  
Then Ororo had come, with Jean and Tessa, and he cursed at himself and his stupid shades that he couldn't warn them that this was all just a trap for Vargas to get his revenge on Rogue and kill the people he had set off to start killing anyway. He yelled profanity in his head when he saw Ororo blow the door away, telling himself he would go right ahead and kill himself if she was killed. And now there she was, walking towards him casually as if not knowing how much her life mattered to him, and although he tried to avert her and tell her to Get the hell away, she refused to make eye contact with him, only walking assuredly towards Vargas.  
  
Sage was animatedly battling Thais, trying to predict her next move, but where usually was her forte, she was now forced to rely on something as foreign as instinct to aid her in her fight with Thaiis. She felt uncomfortable not being able to discern the woman's every move, for she proved far too unpredictable for even a mutant prowess such as her own. Now she had to thoroughly employ her battle skills, and see what she could do to stay alive. Stay alive today. Only for today… why so expendable?  
  
Thaiis came dashing at her with her fists, thank goodness for the fact that she didn't have sword. Her mind did come fairly into use after all, from the miniscule practically worthless edge of being able to pre-empt a fair amount of Thaiis' oncoming shots. Her mind didn't tire like others' did, she was able to always think on her feet. That is if her feet weren't already collapsing below her. The pain ached at her muscles, and the sore spots where Thaiis had hit her mark well. But the latter herself was tiring too, become more weary of the cat and mouse game that sent them bouncing around the room from end to end.  
  
Thaiis reached out to kick Sage, but she quickly somersaulted off the wall and came to stand opposite Thaiis who angrily turned around. They stood staring at each other, panting and sweating. Sage was becoming increasingly annoyed with herself. Why couldn't she, the one with the far superior mind, find some way of beating this woman? Because sometimes it just came down to brute strength.   
  
Ororo closed her eyes and tried to shrug off the little hole in her side, succeeding as the wound was fairly shallow. She righted herself and walked slowly to where Vargas stood, tauntingly playing with the sword's edge against Neal's nose bridge. She held up her hand in warning, and it began to glow with lightning that shot out erratically at her surroundings, eager and on edge to strike Vargas down. Inside though, she was afraid, this was the man that had succeeded in killing her team-mate, and felling so many more, and had barely an expression of strain on his face as he chuckled to himself with some heinous self-pride.  
  
He was a little disgruntled that she had refused to fight him early that morning, when he had had his business with the other four x men and left them in the care of Thais and Thaiis while he went to avenge the substitute death of Storm, whose impersonation had finally reverted to its original self when Vargas cowered back after magnanimity to not kill him, finding a very large pink creature with yellow eyes in the place of where the dead 'Storm' had lain. He did want another trophy to adorn his house, and accompany Psylocke. Rogue would do even better, for the shame she had caused him, but all the same, here was Storm whom he delighted in the strength of enough to kill and reward himself with. If he could, when he would; but that was the joyful irony of the trial.  
  
Sage stood over Thaiis' body, almost in disgust, and that was as much as she could afford in terms of the victor's malevolence before she collapsed beside her as well.  
  
"I see your lightning came back, Storm," he said as she stopped six feet away from him. She just continued to stare at him with pure hatred, for what he had done to Elizabeth, to Neal, to Lucas, to Heather, to Davis and to Jean. Maybe it even was a precognitive avenging for herself.  
  
"But are you worthy prey?" He toyed with her, as he toyed with his sword, and built up her rage as he jeered her and scraped at the back of her mind with his sword that waved in front of Neal's detached face.  
  
Suddenly his gaze changed, and he lunged straight for Ororo's body, much too fast than she had expected him to be, already giving him the allowance to be far more than what she had ever previously faced. She quickly jumped back however, so the blade barely glanced her abdomen, hardly drawing blood. Too close, far too close for comfort. She immediately raised her hand and struck him with her lightning before he could come back for another swing, and surprised, he fell backwards ungracefully, hit by the anger that coursed through her lightning. She certainly had her lightning back, he thought, and she certainly wasn't playing around. _Good_, he thought to himself, _Good_.  
  
"Let's see how you fare if I do this." He reached over for Neal, picked him up by the front of his costume, and held his sword to his neck. Neal winced and swallowed hard. Yes, please kill me, he thought, he didn't want Ororo coming to his rescue and killing herself over it anymore. That was her way, and while he was alive he couldn't make her leave. Damn you Ororo, he thought to himself, but that's why he loved her so much. Her strength of character to do nothing but good, how she held strong in all her values in life, made it a point, a duty, never to fail herself and less so her friends, least so the man she loved. She loved the way she turned her head to look at you, the end of her white hair whipping gently across her back, giving you that look that made you know she cared even though she wouldn't say it out loud, still trying to retain that majestic air of hers. He loved it when one day he'd finally found her, not Storm, but her, and she had kissed him back when he embarrassingly succumbed to his heart. She was gentle and tender, yet ever so regal and austere, always putting on a brave front like a stubborn child. Underneath was so much more, a woman who believed in everything she did, a woman who lived, it seemed, for nothing but the purpose of living for others. But now he had seen that, now he had found her, she had found someone to live entirely for her too. Curse him for loving her, now everyone would merrily die together. Oh swell.  
  
He closed his eyes, because he didn't want to see her hurt anymore, as she stupidly advanced towards Vargas. Go, Ororo, please he pleaded in his eyes, but again she stubbornly refused with hers as they sternly imparted into his, Not leaving without you.  
  
Vargas saw her coming, and as she did he pulled his sword to Neal's breast and began to drag the edge of the sword against it. Neal gritted his teeth in pain, not being able to do much aside from that because it made no difference to how much pain he was already in. How did this one man do it?  
  
"No!" Ororo gasped, seeing Neal's face contort with the pain. "Let him go!" she screamed, albeit completely uselessly. But her rage and pain were what he had been looking for -- Come to me, Storm -- and he waited for her to come close enough when he suddenly let go of Neal, lifting his sword from his chest and letting him fall, and at the same time using the flat of his sword to swipe at Ororo's knees so she fell forward. Her hands stretched out to break her fall, and her fingers clenched against the wooden floor, kneeling on all fours as she looked over the half closed eyes of Neal who lay under her. The lifelessness in his face etched its anguish into her, and she quickly moved to stand up again.  
  
But then, before she could get up, Vargas' sword came harshly upon her back, and he pulled it mercilessly across her, cutting her diagonally through her cape and along her back. He wasn't taunting anymore, now he well and fully meant the blow, forcing the blade and menacingly dragging it through her. She felt the cool edge of the sword against her flesh cut her as it purposefully and surely make its callous path from her shoulder to her hip. He swiped the blade away, leaving a trickle of drops trailing after the end of his sword to the edge of her cape.  
  
That's how.  


Her breath caught, and she looked down at Neal who was fairly oblivious as to what was happening, and all he saw was a tear fall from her eyes, her empty unfocused gaze looking back at him, and blood collecting at the corner of her mouth.  
  
---  



	8. don't touch 2

Thanks to summer'04 and Darlin for your reviews!  
  
8th ---  
  
Vargas came to her side, and with the flat of his sword, hit her across her chest, flinging her across the room, where she came to rest next to the battered body of Sage, next to the body of Thaiis equally spent.  
  
Vargas knew she was still breathing, and came up to her, ruthlessly pulled her chin off the floor, and said, "Despair.", spitting the words at her. He walked back to Neal and raised the sword above his head, ready to plunge it into the crumpled body in front of him.  
  
A pervading sense of doom paraded its way about the fallen and falling people in the room. It side stepped over the bodies cautiously, keeping its hands behind it's back as it galloped in diagonals and whistled, dreamily gazing at its pointed feet that blithely touched the ground. It made it's way up to the barely conscious entity on the floor and stood with it's feet apart over her shoulders, and bent forward so that it looked upside down at the lady's face. He looked from the left, then from the right, then settled on the left and tauntingly whispered into her ear  
  
Nannynannybooboo.  
  
It grinned and ran away, the bells on its Jester's shoes tinkling.  
  
Ororo lay on the floor, and moved a trembling hand to the corner of her mouth to wipe away the blood. Was she dead? She suddenly felt a very extra- body experience, unable to focus on anything, shrugging off humanity and grappling for Neal's hand to jerk him out of mortality and accompany her into ethereality. She didn't think about her mistake, how she had failed her friends, only a very calm wonderment of Now where is the tunnel and the bright blinding light?  
  
People die only once. Oh if she should be so lucky to have that reputed sweet release. She'd been cheated of it once.. no twice.. too many to count, too many to be just. You're only happy to live the second chance when you're happy living. And sometimes in lives like hers you start to want that saccharine assurance that there's nothing more that need be done, what you see will be true Heaven's luminance and not pseudo-incandescence of the Xavier med-lab.  
  
Neal.  
  
Neal. Look at Neal flying woman. She saw his body rested in a twisted angle, like a spent chew toy covered in Death's slobber of blood and done with. She couldn't let him die, not like this, not under Vargas' hands. Not when she so helplessly watched from a few feet away. Not when she could do something still.  
  
She was responsible. Their angel, this being as far incompetent as angels could come. She saw no tailored bleached feathers descend from a parting in the heavens, only her own home-made sky-spawned lightning. She had no halo, only a shackle, no calling, only a duty. She had no lyre, only a scale that she borrowed from the wrong Greek on which guilt and relenting bliss lay en guard.  
  
No.  
  
Death and Doom sat on the fire place swinging their legs with their chins in their hands as Hope ran around Ororo's head screaming.  
  
She would do something.  
  
Do what?? Her body felt warm with the blood flowing from her back down her arms and her sides, and she thought to simply let it be and let go in this comforting womb of blood.  
  
No!  
  
She could do it. Come on! She controlled the weather. She controlled all wind, all rain, all lightning. Lightning! Electricity. Any charge. All she had to do was think of how to bend her powers. Think Ororo, Think of how much you want to save him. Her powers, they were limitless, she had only to concentrate. She wanted it badly enough. Outside the sky was already dark, swirling blackened clouds struggling for space in the crowded canvas of her pain, threatening to spiral into tornados. She held out her hand towards Vargas, still lying on the floor.  
  
No!  
  
She could do this. She had to. She had seen what her powers could do, and proven herself that there was so much more than petty storms. Her powers were indefinable. All up to this while she had thought herself mainly concerned with the weather, just a weather goddess, but she wasn't a goddess. She was a mutant not defined by the expectations of helpless thirsty blindsided worshippers, and a very good mutant at that. She was her own to mould. Why had she never seen this? Now, she knew. She could save Neal and her friends, and she would. They depended on her.  
  
She called lightning to her hand, panting as she did from the overexertion that was even further widening her gaping wound in her back that freely leaked onto her costume. She let her hand become aglow, but now no stray bolts shot out from it randomly. Her heart raced as she saw the sword slowly reaching its pinnacle before its plunge, and her breath was sharp and short as she tried to channel the electricity around her hand so that it swirled clockwise around it. She charged it further and further, until finally you could actually see the lightning running around on the circular plane of a track surrounding her hand. Moving charges. She began to waver the strength of the spiralling lightning, making the ring around her palm glow dark then brightly then dark again. Moving charges with an alternating current create a magnetic field.  
  
She further stretched out her hand towards the sword, and with a final burst of strength, fine tuned the magnetic field she was generating, and directed all its force towards the sword that sat in Vargas' hands. Suddenly the sword pulled itself out of Vargas' grip and its metal hilt came slicing through the air to land with a firm 'thud' in her cupped palm. She pulled her body forward, grasped it, doused the lightning, and curled her fingers around the hilt.  
  
Vargas at first looked shocked, having his sword suddenly pulled away from him, and even more shocked when he saw it had flown into the hand of Ororo. Her powers were nothing like this, she was no mistress of magnetism, only of the storm, how could she be doing this? Then his shock simply turned to anger of having been defied, having had his sweet vengeance snatched from his clenched hands.  
  
Ororo couldn't be bothered to quell his surprise, and was reminded, as she tried to stand up, of the searing pain shooting itself up and down across her back. She couldn't fight like this. But odds are rarely even. If they are, we can never overcome a loss and win. She dug the sword into the ground, putting her weight on it as she tried to get up. Leaning on it, her eyes misted over, and actually began turning into a film of electric blue as she began to further explore the extent of her powers.  
  
Think, Ororo, Think. She tried to see how she could bend her gifts into strengths so new she never though possible for herself. It was all hers to call upon, and hers she would, to save the life of her love and her friends and maybe even herself. She strained herself to her limits, not so much caring about how dark the sky was already, though she still tried to keep that under rein so something in China wouldn't explode from a lightning strike. She pushed herself far past her limits now, not caring because either way she was just as about dead. At least this way she had a hope.  
  
She had done this before, seeing things in its electrical energy form, and had done so very vividly to her surprise just today when somehow she had almost killed Sage. A thin film appeared in her mind, covering everything in the room, letting her see a little into the cables that ran under the floor and through the walls. Then she strained further, and further, until she could see what she had seen sitting on her bed early this morning, nothing but blue-white lights shooting from point to point. She knew what she had done to Sage. Nervous impulses are merely electricity, and somehow she had stopped Sage's nervous impulses altogether, making Sage just 'stop'. Right now, she could feel every neurone, every axon, every dendrite, every synapse that lined her own body. She let her eyes close over as she took a deep breath, and with her mind's control over all electricity and weather, she stopped the synapses that linked themselves to the nerves in her back, and suddenly all the pain was gone, and the strain was far less pronounced. She was suitably impressed with herself, and with surprising feats such as this, no one needs humility. And with that confidence, she rose to defeat Vargas once and for all.  
  
Vargas had seen Ororo panting over the sword, blood sliding over from the wound on her back to the floor at her side, blood leaking out of her mouth as well. Suddenly he saw her eyes shoot open, saw her right herself, and pace quickly towards him as if nothing had happened. Safe to say he had never seen an opponent like this, who got up and challenged him with a fatal wound having struck her down only seconds ago. Also safe to say, he was defenceless. This woman, he knew, was far too strong for him, and he held no sword. With his fatalism he was already defeated.  
  
She came quickly towards him, before he could register back with reality, and emotionlessly thrust the sword into his stomach, making his upper body lurch forward from the pain, then he collapsed and rolled over to his side.  
  
Honour, honour.  
  
But she held strong to who she was. She wouldn't kill him, no matter how much pain, physically and far more emotionally, he had already caused her.  
  
No! Honour!  
  
He grabbed the hilt and drove the sword right through. He wouldn't be pitied a second time, not mercilessly left to live.  
  
Honour.  
  
Ororo tried to run to him to stop him, but his eyes, refuting, irrevocably closed. She now stood in the centre of the room, with people fallen all around her. She had to pick them up.  
  
Then she looked down at her feet. Neal lay unconscious and she brushed a hand along his cheek and propped him up against the back of an armchair. His blood smeared her chest, and she didn't want to think how much of it was being lost. He looked so peaceful and serene that she hardly wanted to disturb him and move him. He wished he would just open his eyes, and stop playing with her and put her out of her misery. But she couldn't stay and watch over him, she couldn't be selfish because her friends needed her as well.  
  
She ran up to the side of Jean, who stared catatonically at the edge of the handle of the sword that rose out of her shoulder. Ororo looked down and gasped to see that the sword had struck through to the floor, where it slowly but surely tapped out Jean's blood. She rushed to pull her cape off her back, and found it practically completely drenched in her blood, which jolted her back to the memory of her pain. As gently as she could, slid the sword out of Jean and wrapped her wound with her own cape, to stop the blood and it's widening pool under her. The sudden anguish caused Jean's eyelids to flutter, and her lip flinched in pain. She looked up to see Ororo emotionlessly looking down at her.  
  
"Hey, you got to stop saving my life. Thank you." she said weakly, swallowing hard from the pain. Ororo merely gently blinked to say her welcome as her expression remained indifferent. Her own pain was getting very hard to keep under control, and the sting was slowly creeping back into her senses. She breathed deeply to keep her mind clear from the pain, and lifted Jean up and walked over to the couch with her in her hands, lying her down to give her some comfort, as people are gravely in need of after being impaled.  
  
Suddenly the sound of a plane could be heard right outside the house. Ororo looked up to see the blackbird descending onto front lawn. Perhaps they had noticed their absence at the mansion, for Jean hadn't wanted to involve more people in the list of who Vargas wished dead. Perhaps it was Xavier who had felt his students popping like suicidal moths on a flame.  
  
Crimson veins seeped through the morning sky, buffered by the supple ends of the clouds.  
  
Ororo sighed with relief. At least help was here. She was afraid she might not be able to go on any longer. From behind her, Neal began to gesture towards her.  
  
"Or."  
  
She quickly turned around and ran to his side, just as his eyes gently closed again.  
  
"Neal. Neal!" Ororo knelt down next to him, trying to scream into his face so that his eyes would open. It worked, they did, and he looked back at her and smiled very gratefully that she hadn't gone and killed herself. How, he wasn't so sure, but the joy gave him enough strength to push his upper body toward her, to be closer to her and try to find the energy to say how much he loved her, how glad he was he hadn't lost her.  
  
At this moment, Hank came running into the room, and surprisingly with Rogue and Gambit there as well who had found out about Vargas searching for them. Rogue felt immeasurable guilt rising up her throat, as she saw her injured friends littering the floor. Why had she ever gone? What in the world possessed her to not kill Vargas? Now her friends had suffered at her cost, and from the looks of Neal and Jean, they were probably going to die because of her. Damn herself.  
  
She saw Ororo kneeling over Neal holding his hand tightly in hers. The scene touched her as she heard Ororo softly whispering words of comfort and love to Neal. She found it not so much a surprise that Ororo was the last one standing, the only one who had been able to win over Vargas. Then she saw her lift a hand to her face and put it back down. Was Ororo. crying?  
  
As she came closer to her, to reach out her hand to her shoulder and apologize for all she had caused them, she saw to her surprise that there was a large slit in the back of her costume, though through her manner she did not appear to be wounded. But then again.  
  
Rogue looked closer, and saw that the black of her costume had been camouflaging dark lines of blood that had soaked themselves into her costume.  
  
Rogue gaped, as the blood stained tip of Ororo's white hair licking her back confirmed her suspicions.  
  
Neal gathered his last remaining strength to bring her head closer to his and kiss her gently on her lips.  
  
"Ororo-- !" Rogue shouted from behind her.  
  
She felt Neal's cold lips touch her own, and she gratefully, exhaustedly, kissed back, and as she did, she let go of all her strained efforts and heavily breathed onto Neal's face as their lips remained locked. She couldn't hold it back any longer, the pain was far too much greater, the gash far too deep, and her synapses were being overloaded with urgent neuro- transmitters screaming messages of pain that she could no longer keep at bay. They pain came rushing back headlong into her, cruelly and unsympathetically. She pulled away from Neal's kiss at that moment, still leaning over his face as she hyperventilated, gasping desperately for air. For a moment, she just stared at him, looking into Neal's worried eyes. Then she let her own eyes gently close as she fell onto Neal's chest, her head resting over the edge of his left shoulder. The blood freely flowed now, shielding her and Neal in a crest of tender enrapture.  
  
.  
  
I am ready to climb into the maw of Death. Masticate me. Salivate, strew me and spew me and separate me, take me apart and let me depart. Stain me with your breath as I stain yours with mine and give me your fanged embrace so I may find final finality in the crevices of your jaw corroded with over expense. Sequester me in your scabbard of the caveat growl for the weak, for those whom you chose to grant again your fatal passion-kiss. Ingest and keep me in your weathered gut.  
  
.  
  
Everyone was safe now. Let go.  
  
-- 


	9. over the rainbow

hElo! It's not over yet. Thank you summers2004 n Darlin for your reviews!

Over the rainbow

Ooo.

Death's gut looked awfully nice. She even felt fond of it.

Finally. She wanted to let out her arms and spiral forever in this empty whiteness, float back and forth, and bound along invisible stepping stones on the stream of immortality. She missed this place. So open, so wide, and nothing to frighten her. She fell backward, and rested on the bosom of a strange nothingness that carried her here and there.

Nothing, absolutely nothing. Nothing but freedom for her, at last.

Suddenly she saw the whiteness coming to life around her. It became hued with green, then a little pink, and soon she found herself standing in a very familiar garden. She'd seen this place not too long ago, having left her spasming body on the operating table and floated up, up, and up, and even when she thought she was already enough up she still wasn't sure if she was still going up or not. She had felt so light, as she did now, only wanting to go higher and higher. Free. Finally free.

The last time she came here, she had had to leave, but now she wouldn't. She was going to stay here forever. She walked towards the tiny fountain with the naked cupid spouting water, and stood still looking around as she burrowed her toes in between the moist dew-drizzled grass.

Looking around, the place looked strangely untouched. Where were her parents? How unwelcoming this after life was.

Suddenly, she heard soft voice calling from a distance. She turned around, and a purpled-haired lady in purple spandex cocked her head and smiled at her.

"Why hello! What a pleasant surprise!"

Psylocke leaned forward and grabbed Ororo, wrapping her arms around her and embracing her tightly. Ororo gladly returned the embraced, both having missed the other far too dearly.

Psylocke pulled away and smiled at her.

"What happened? I don't often get visitors."

"We had some trouble with Vargas," Ororo said in a matter of fact manner, caring for nothing else but her current bliss and tranquil afterlife.

"Only you..?"

"Why, are you dissatisfied with me?" Ororo asked, looking at Psylocke from the corner of her eye and smiling.

"Haha! No, one's far more than enough! Especially you dear."

Psylocke reached for Ororo's hand, and both walked silently around the large garden that glittered in the tender ethereal light. Their hair gently billowed in the gentle heavenly breeze they couldn't feel.

"What has happened to you, Elizabeth? The last we saw of you, you were pulled back through some portal."

"Yeah, I'm not so sure myself what happened," Psylocke commented as her brow slightly furrowed. "but it's hard to worry here, you know?"

"So, this is heaven?"

"Not so sure myself, I'm beginning to think it's an interlude of sorts."

"I guess that would be right, the last time I came was only for a passing visit, not a stay. Where is the real thing?"

"I don't really know myself, I don't even think I'm dead. Shouldn't you know? Where were you headed?"

"I suppose I've lingered too long here, waiting for something."

"What?" Psylocke asked, looking around and wondering what Ororo was trying to find in the now empty surroundings again.

"Last I came I saw my parents…"

"Maybe they're waiting for you some where up there. Or maybe you weren't really supposed to be here…" Psylocke smiled wryly, knowing Ororo's stubborn streak could shove her even into the fringes of heaven. "But don't be floating anywhere yet, tell me, how's everyone?"

"Well we all miss you so very much," Ororo said, turning to look Psylocke in the eye, showing her how deeply she really missed her. She cherished this moment so dearly.

"That's really nice," Psylocke said as she smiled, turning her head to look up and around for a sign of something they might be headed to. "How's Neal? I do miss Neal…"

Ororo looked down, smiling to herself.

"What? Ororo? No…"

"Hey! Who said you could read minds in the afterlife!"

"My greatness transcends all," Psylocke replied, raising her eyebrows and bowing in mock self-pride. Ororo retaliated by having a little cloud float by, and trickle on to Psylocke's purple tresses.

"Oh will you look at that…" Ororo said innocently.

Psylocke dove out from under the miniature rain cloud and ran to Ororo's other side, playfully nudging her side.

"Well I'm very happy for you both, do take care of him ok?"

"It is going to be hard from here…."

"Well we can always visit him in his dreams."

Both ladies smiled, as they continued to walk on nothing, through a nothing that appeared to go on forever, locked tightly in each other's arms and giggling.

They chatted for hours on end, about the group, about the Professor, new goings on at the Institute, their fateful deaths, Ororo's flowers, talking as they continued to hold each other's hand, never wanting to part again. Ororo held Psylocke tightly, not wanting to return to the trials of humanity and the living, only wanting to stay forever in this calm, gentle breeze they couldn't feel, the light that shone brightly and warmed them and the smell of fields and forests and freshly bloomed flowers, when all they could see around them was still endless white of nothingness.

"Look! I think there is something ahead."

"I don't see anything…"

"There! It's a little faint…"

"Ororo, why are you translucent…?" Psylocke put her hand on the other side of Ororo, but she could see her own hand clearly. She raised her eyebrows in surprise.

"You going?"

"I'm not sure myself…"

Ororo found herself drawn to the light she had seen, coming closer and closer to its brightness. She could almost see something more, but it was hard to tell, and she squinted her eyes, still walking alone towards the light.

"**THREE!!!!!**"

Death retched.

And suddenly the image came flying full-force into her view, and she saw it was a violet-white fluorescent lamp.

Like stupid suicidal moths.

Ha, she laughed to herself, in a tad of bitter irony. Failed, again? It seemed her day of sweet liberation might be a long time coming.


	10. Herself

hi!! :) There's been a slight edit to the last chapter 

10th

the final chapter of this little tale. 

"What's happening." She'd suddenly had a flash of bright light and masked faces, sort of in a sepia tone. She held Elizabeth's hand tighter, unsure of what was happening. Elizabeth came closer and stared into her eyes. Maybe it was concern in them or it could have been dread… What was happening? 

Again everything around her suddenly changed to sepia. It lasted a little longer as a shock surged through her chest and her eyes squeezed shut. But when she opened them, there she was holding Betsy's hands again. 

And the flashes became incessant, flashing alternately in front of her eyes. She turned her head in confusion as she became disoriented from her surroundings, lines blurring between what was supposed to be reality. The sepia was turning to colour. 

Psylocke began to fizzle. Ororo reached out a hand to touch her, but she began to fade into purple static, and mouthed the words "seeya" as she became slightly intangible. Once more from the edges of her view, lines of surgical green and sterile white seeped into replace her view with a captured stasis of masked figures standing around with looks of consternation. Her vision snapped back to the white, then back and forth in confusion as if her life essence was unsure to which it should devoted the loyalty of "home". Like an old time film, choppy like flipping pages, bit by bit Psylocke smiled, turned around and began to walk away. Her hair, swaying like a tantalizing purple thread fraying from something pretty, something, someone Ororo still wanted to grasp onto. She walked away slowly, it was sort of perfect, like it was the conclusive closure at the end of the film. 

"No!" she shouted towards Betsy, where was she going? Where was there that she could? 

"No…" she said again to Betsy. She didn't want to have to lose her again, or lose herself from their company. 

"Hey Psy," Ororo said softly, and reached out her hand, "don't go." She turned around slowly to face Ororo. 

"But I have…" said with neglect, with finality, yet with hope, with desire, with dismay. 

"Stay just a little," Ororo offered, feeling herself pulling away though, with desperation like fingers slipping off a precipice, and Psylocke walked slowly, slowly, further away. 

And in the other story told, clips of which were mingled with the other sequence, figures slowly moved about aimlessly, seeming unsure and yet expectant as they moved aside, what, were they letting go? Was she supposed to as well? She felt confused, hopping ensued, as she pranced over, and back again, across a slowly disappearing line. A song started to sound in her mind, a song from her childhood as matters and a fancy of life and death too mature flew over her head.

And suddenly the flashes stopped. Psylocke turned back and ran towards Ororo until they met face to face again, her expression betraying she had just one last thing to say, and just something left to do. Ororo and Betsy stood in the empty blanche, holding each other and staring into each other's eyes, as Ororo began to breathe heavily and exhaustedly onto Betsy's face. A tingling began to creep up from her right heel to her calf. Barely visible veins of green began to streak across the white canvas of nothing, growing more vivid as they crept onward and grew with a sort of anger. Then green, orange, yellow, silver, as Ororo's back began to tingle. And with one sudden, final hasty blow of second given life, colour killed the scene as Ororo felt Psylocke pull even closer to her. "Will miss you, and them all." 

"We will miss you very much as well, Elizabeth," Ororo replied, squeezing Psylocke's fingers in return, "never be a stranger." 

"Never was." 

They both smiled at each other, as Ororo slowly faded away, and the brown, slender hand of Ororo's in Psylocke's palm became only air, a very fond memory. 

A room standing still, as Ororo remained inanimate, staring at the room that stood as lifeless. Locaine drip hanging to the left, paddles suspended in the air above her held by hands that were hanging unmoving, leading to a face as immobile as it was unfamiliar. Hazel eyes peering just above a green mask, green like the sea of people that stood around her, all motionless. 

Everything still. 

And then pain that started as a gentle touch in the small of her back shot down her spine as she was shoved back into the normality of reality, with its monotonous beeping and a flurry of voices, the cacophony of sounds rushed into her and she was there, in the moment, in the sense of herself. 

. . 

. 

She sat up and her eyes flew open, and she stared back at the man with the paddles in his hands. He heaved a sigh of relief as her friends drew around and she fell back again. She looked around for a while more without saying anything as her friends started to become static chatter and she slowly rethought what had passed and how she got here. She was trying to evaluate how the moment should feel like and what she should be feeling and expressing. It was difficult, to say the least, for all that she didn't know in the first place of how things were supposed to be, by right. And yet here it was, here were things, here were the things she found difficult to understand, or to absorb, or maybe to appreciate, if that was what their calling was. Were all things like this, in their blank unforgiving frankness and elusiveness? 

It had been a journey of sorts. A rather exciting, intriguing one where she'd discovered some things new, let go of others, experiences in comprehension and categorization of fates, emotions, things and such, fresh and coarse. It all lay plainly before her, bare and honest as it was. It presented all of itself in a way such that you would have thought that there might not really be anything to understand and at the same time there was some newer conception you had to ascertain. 

And over this time there were the things she had come to discover of herself, education by which she looked closer at herself through windows other than her eyes, through other cavities in her that exposed her for what she was, and told her. There were the small things, or the external calamities, that had come to show her who she was and to tell her through a grand orchestration who the person she was, was. They were little lessons that had made a bigger lesson. 

So now she was back, without the mantle of death. Now it seemed here was the story and the tale and the fable and its moral. It became clear, and simple, crystal refinement and watery flow, windlike progression and elemental trust. It became right, like the way things should be, and settled like rain into the crevices of cracked caked land, and was sensible and sequential like thunder after lightning. It was suddenly fitting, and suddenly sure, like a sirroco blowing over the flat desert plains of Africa as it should. And so she found that the ending it told very plainly and surely now, was that there was death and here was life again, for all that it brought, for all that it didn't bring, and for all that it might and never would. Here was what it all was, how everything simply went about, here was life in all its honesty, trueness and reality. And it was time, now, to pick up once again and move on, to continue, time to gather up the scattered ashes and to take off to the skies again, for it is so that this is she -- Storm. 

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End. 

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i can't seem to make proper spaces with this thing. ugh.

a/n. Well..! I would like to say that ah, here is the big grand conclusion to my story! The pinnacle! Tada! But um no it's not, really. I suppose you're reading this with an expecting mindset like one still stuck in mid sentence and now that you see 'end' you are going what the blue blazes of hell, that was it?, and yeah.. well.. yeah. The truth is I was going to launch into many more chapters about 'Pstylor' (haha dam I like that still), a uh.. storm and psylocke hybrid, but well that really wouldn't have been good I felt and hopefully, this end came enough in time to end the story the way it was fairly satisfactorily.. thanks for reading :) (I just wanted to get on another fan fic too.) but yeah. Thanks for reading :) i'm really grateful :)


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